March 12, 2012

Upcoming: Barcode shape for Calligra

More and more signs and papers seem to get covered with QR code pictures these days, to allow people with camera-equipped devices to copy some text by taking a picture, helping around the error-prone and cumbersome copying by typing letter by letter. Those code tags are not really aesthetically pleasing (yet), but if you ask your search engine for “QR” and “art” you will see that people are trying to do something about that.

Trying to do something about any support for 2D and 1D bar codes in Calligra, now I have been doing that the last days. With the prison library around there is some code already to do the encoding of text data into the code pictures, and with Inge Wallin having added up-to-date template code for a shape last week, doing a shape for barcodes was to a large degree simply filling in template code and wiring things up.

So for Calligra 2.5, the release after the next, you will hopefully be able to e.g. add a QR code to the last of your slides, if the code passes review and testing. So people can get your contact data as vcard or a link to a website with more info, by you dropping a barcode shape and entering the text like this:

This could also be a useful for someone wanting to write a program for mass-production of labels, similar to KBarcode, but based on Calligra modules, to be more powerful e.g. thanks to all the shapes.

Calligra is really getting somewhere finally. Check out the sources and see yourself. Those people have done amazing work. Time for everyone to start and join polishing, to help on the breakthrough from a dream to reality, which has never been closer.